Dimension Of Dreams

Chapter Fourteen

If Blade had not moved before, he certainly moved now. He flung himself off Halda, off the cushions, and onto his feet in a single, blurringly swift motion, twisting about to locate his clothes and weapons. He put on his kilt, sandals, and weapons belt, not bothering with his tunic. Snatching up sword and spear, he plunged out the door toward the staircase without a word to Halda or a glance back at her. She could take care of herself. His job was down in the courtyard.

The stairs were already jammed with fighters when Blade reached them. Most were already fully armed, and there were no women or children running about, getting underfoot, or distracting the fighters' attention. Krog's and his planning and training for defense had produced some results. Had they produced enough?

He reached the bottom of the stairs and charged out the door, spotting the commander of the courtyard guards approach at a run. The man dashed up to Blade and bobbed his head in a quick salutation.

«Green Towers?» asked Blade. «How many?» He had adopted the clipped speech that was a badge of a free Waker fighter.

«Don't know for sure,» the man replied. «Alarm rocket just went up. Far-away patrols not back yet. Sent five men outside gate to help bring them back safe.»

«Good.» Blade nodded. «Take charge of the gate. I'll see to getting the men placed on the walls.» The commander jerked his head again in acknowledgment and ran off toward the gate. Blade turned back to the tower.

Men were still pouring out of it at a dead run. Some of them were already clambering up the ladders onto the walkway along the inside of the courtyard wall. In the higher windows Blade saw several archers climbing out onto the ledges, bows and quivers in their hands. Then he saw Krog and Halda dash out of the door, both armed to the teeth. He ran to meet them.

Krog was as sparing with words now as any fighter. His eyes swept the courtyard and the soldiers hurrying about it like purposeful ants. He moved back to Blade and nodded. «Good work, Blade. They do as you taught them to do. We should be able to stand off this attack. I did not expect it from the Green Towers, though. They were our allies.» He shook his head sadly.

«If they thought they could-«began Blade. But what he wanted to say about the Green Towers' thoughts was stamped into oblivion a split-second later by a tremendous uproar from outside the gate. Pounding feet, the grind and clang of weapons, conflicting war cries-«Krog!» «Green Tower!»-cries of rage and agony, the sound of men running or being hurled against the gate. . On top of the wall the Blue Eye fighters began to join in the shouting and point downward. One of them turned toward the little clump of leaders in the courtyard and bellowed;

«Green Towers! They're outside the gate. They're carrying lad-«A spear flashing up from below drove through his body from behind. He clutched the bloody spearhead protruding from his stomach, looked down at it as if wondering where it could have come from, and toppled forward and down off the walkway to the ground with a crunching thud. Blade saw several of the man's comrades launch their spears downward in retaliation. Screams rose from outside the walls as some of them found targets.

«Don't throw until you have a good target,» Blade yelled up to the men on the wall. Spears were now arching over on all three sides as the attackers worked their way around the outside. Spears plunged down from the men on the wall, and arrows whirred from the archers in the tower windows. The Green Towers seemed to have no archers. A good thing, too; a few good bowmen could have picked off a good many men from the walkway.

The walkway was now fully manned. Blade shooed back the remaining fighters and the armed women who came out to join Halda inside the tower, telling them to block off the door. If the Green Towers did get swordsmen and spearmen into the courtyard, Blade wanted to make sure they couldn't charge straight into an undefended tower and slaughter women and children right and left.

Then a harsh, irregular rumbling sound rose above the battle's roar. The sickly yellow light of many torches began to glow over the top of the wall. Several shouts in unison came down from the walkway.

«They're bringing up a-a-a-«The watchers on the wall seemed to have no words for what they saw. Blade sprinted to the nearest ladder and swarmed up it onto the walkway. The men on either side of him cleared a space for him as he flattened himself against and wall and cautiously peered over the top.

Lumbering out of the street that led to the gate came a long cylinder mounted on four solid wheels. A swarm of men and women in the garb of slaves tugged at it along the side and pushed at it from behind. Whips cracked as Green Tower fighters strode up and down beside it, lashing the bare backs of the slaves. Close behind it strode a number of Green Tower fighters, each pair carrying a long ladder.

Blade swore. Somewhere in the ranks of the Green Towers was a man with sufficient ingenuity to reinvent the battering ram. That long wheeled cylinder could be nothing else. With the mob of slaves pushing it, it would have the gate to the courtyard down in no time. At the same time other Green Towers would be trying to swarm up the scaling ladders and over the walls. The double-barreled attack would sweep the courtyard clear. The tower was not provisioned for a long siege. In a few days the Blue Eyes would be forced to accept slavery or a final fight against desperate odds. If they were going to win, they would have to win out here. He sprang down the ladder and ran across the courtyard.

Already the fighters on the walkway were shouting for more spears, and slaves and young boys were running out of the tower with bundles of them under their arms. Blade caught one of the boys as he sprinted back after delivering his load and shouted in his ear. «Run up and tell the archers to aim at the men pushing the thing on wheels. The Green Towers are going to use it to try to break down the gate.» The boy turned pale at the thought and dashed off.

Blade turned to Halda and snapped, «Have the women and men fighters inside pile things on the stairway. If the Green Towers break through, we don't want them to have an easy climb up inside the tower.» Halda's face was grim and set as she also ran off.

In the light pouring up from the torches outside the wall, Blade saw arrows flash down from the windows at the slave gang handling the ram. The shooting was good. A chorus of agonized howls rose from beyond the gate. Krog looked toward the gate and shook his head as he listened.

«I don't like killing slaves who are only doing what their masters tell them. I would not have it that way, in time.»

Blade shrugged, trying to present a callousness that he did not feel. «If we can kill a few of them, the rest may just break and run or even escape.» Krog nodded.

Arrows or not, the slaves at the ram must have gone right on pushing it into position. A minute later the gates shuddered under a tremendous impact that sent echoes rolling around the courtyard. Blade winced and made a quick check of his personal weapons. It looked as if there was going to be hand-to-hand fighting very shortly. That one impact alone had shaken the gate as though an avalanche had crashed against it.

Green Tower war cries suddenly sounded out louder than before. Heads and glinting spear points suddenly appeared over the top of the wall as the first assault parties came up the storming ladders. The defenders on the walkway flung themselves at this new threat, jabbing and throwing their spears. Blade saw one monstrous Blue Eye fighter swing two spears like clubs at two heads appearing one on each side of him. The heads disappeared. Then the man thrust the spears down over the wall and levered the scaling ladders backward. Resounding crashes and a chorus of screams and yells marked when they landed.

But there were too many men coming up the ladders for the defenders to meet. When the Blue Eyes exposed themselves to stab at the attackers and push down ladders, spears would flash up from the ground outside. Blue Eye fighters would crumple down onto the walkway or topple backward off it. One Green Tower man climbed over the wall where the fall of two defenders left a gap and started for the nearest ladder. But as he set foot on the top rung, Krog's tanned arm snapped forward. A spear hurled with the accuracy of a rifle bullet drove through the man's chest and slammed him back against the wall.

Meanwhile the crashes and booms continued as the ram battered at the gate; so did the screams as the archers sent more arrows whistling down into the packed slaves wielding the ram. Which would break first, the will of the slaves or the gates to the courtyard? Blade sent a messenger up with orders for the archers to be ready to shift fire to the gate if it went down and to Halda to be ready to lead her fighters out.

The gates were grids of thick logs on massive wrought-iron hinges, an impressive creation for the Wakers, who preferred to scrounge from the ruins. But it was giving way under the pounding of the ram, giving way faster than the morale of the slaves pushing that ram. Blade saw the lashings that held the logs together begin to strain and fray. He heard them creak and groan as the resilience of the logs made them rebound from each stroke. Flecks of rust jumped from hinges and bolts as they shook under the impacts.

With a screech of tortured metal, one of the hinges pooped completely free of the wall, dangling pathetically in a cloud of mortar dust. Soon the only thing holding the gates against the attackers would be the two massive log bars behind them and the fighters Blade was now assembling in the courtyard. Halda was among them, her face still set and grim. But now there was a blazing battle lust in her eyes. She seemed almost past caring whether the People of the Blue Eye won this fight or lost it, as long as there was a chance for her to get into it.

That chance came in almost the next second. Half a dozen Green Towers burst over the top of the wall, screaming at the top of their lungs. They swept two defenders who desperately tried to block them out of existence with flailing sword strokes. One of the attackers gyrated and pranced so wildly that he fell straight off the walkway onto the ground with a squashy thump. The others moved to cut off a section of walkway. Onto that now defenseless section poured a steady stream of Green Tower fighters, screaming, waving swords, hurling spears, leaping wildly down into the courtyard, or scrambling down the ladders.

Instantly the bowmen in the tower shifted to this new menace. They dropped the first two Green Towers to reach the ground in their tracks. Krog picked off a third man with another deadly spear cast. Then Blade moved in, sword carving a humming path through the air before him, straight at the men swarming off the ladders. Behind him came Halda and her fighters, all of them screaming like madmen and brandishing as many weapons as they had hands to hold.

The sudden counterattack brought Blade straight into the ranks of the attackers before they could react. The first three men in his path died as if they had been shoved against a whirling buzz saw; screams, the meaty sound of steel going through flesh and bone, blood everywhere, and then three bodies on the ground. Their comrades checked their rush and fanned out right and left to meet Halda's fighters in a series of death grapples.

Blade kept on into the center of the Green Towers. The continuous crash of his sword against their frantic parries sounded like half a dozen blacksmiths hard at work. He switched from slashes to thrusts in mid-stroke, always on the move, always pressing home the attack, never giving an inch but forcing the Green Towers back whole yards. Arms were lopped off, heads split, chests and stomachs ripped open by that deadly sword. One or two foolhardy types tried to scramble up the ladder, but Blade chopped one in half before he climbed the third rung. An arrow shrieking down from the tower dropped the other one just as he reached the walkway. Then from right and left Blue Eye fighters stormed along the walkway. The Green Tower ladders outside went crashing down in screams and splintering noises. Those Green Tower fighters who did not leap for safety down the outside of the wall died where they stood or else toppled off into the courtyard. The attack over the wall was broken. Blade ordered some of Halda's fighters up the ladders to reinforce the walkway and turned back to the gates.

One hinge on either side had now pulled entirely free of the wall. The great central bolt screeched and twisted farther and farther out of shape each time the ram crashed home. In a few more minutes the gate would be held only by the bars. And one of those bars was already beginning to show the splintered white of a crack.

Halda and Krog now joined Blade with a dozen more fighters in their wake. The commander of the gate guard and his little band also joined them. The gate was doomed; the best tactic now was to hit the Green Towers hard the minute they poured through the broken gate. A minute that was fast approaching-both bars were now bending and splitting and giving off ominous cracking noises.

Suddenly the upper bar gave way entirely, falling into two pieces and both pieces crashing down into the courtyard. Instantly both gates sagged backward, shuddering as the ram jolted them again. They slipped steadily downward until they hung drunkenly on the lower bar at a forty-five degree angle to the ground. Shouts, cheers, incoherent raw-throated howls rose up from behind the gates as the Green Towers saw the way into the courtyard open before them. Blade snapped out orders, and the twenty fighters around him formed themselves into a solid block. Their spears bristled forward and to the sides like the quills of a porcupine. That formation would at least persuade the Green Towers not to try a mad rush as they came over the gates.

But the first figures to come over the gate were not Green Tower fighters. Instead the top of the gates was suddenly swarming with men and women, some of them bloody, most of them staggering with fatigue, as they lurched and scrambled forward. All of them wore the filthy garments of slaves.

«What the devil-?» Blade snarled at no one in particular, staring at the onrush of slaves.

Krog hefted his spear. «The Green Towers are driving the slaves ahead of their fighters, to force us to use up spears. We'd better-«but Blade clamped an iron hand down on the leader's arm as he raised it for a throw.

«No, wait-look!» Blade's arm shot out and his finger pointed at Green Tower fighters now scrambling up the ladder into the midst of the slaves. Their swords were flashing, and slaves were going down screaming and even bloodier than before to writhe and kick out their lives. Others clawed with bare hands and feet at the fighters. Blade's voice rose to a triumphant roar. «The Green Tower slaves are revolting against their masters. They're coming to us!» He raised arms and both weapons high over his head and bellowed, «Slaves! We of the Blue Eyes welcome you. To us, to us! Kill your masters and join us!»

The slaves heard him and began boiling down off the gates, hitting the ground at a run, sprinting toward the solid safety of the Blue Eye formation. The Green Tower fighters heard him too and screamed curses and threats. Spears began to whistle toward him. One struck down a fighter standing beside him. Krog heard him and nodded slowly with a frown on his lean face. And Halda heard him, and the glare he saw her aim at him would have boiled an egg in its shell.

But there was no time to argue with her. The slaves were dashing frantically for the protection the Blue Eyes seemed to offer. Blade desperately waved them on toward the greater shelter of the tower itself. The Green Tower fighters were hacking their way through the slaves and rapidly gathering into a formation of their own just inside the gates. As more and more of them clambered over the gates and the bodies of the slaves and joined the formation, it became clear that the Blue Eyes would be badly outnumbered. Blade swallowed and met Krog's gaze with his own.

«How well did you train these-allies?» he asked.

«Too well, I think,» replied Krog with a sour grin. «Even so, with equal numbers, we win. But numbers won't be equal.»

«Two to one against us already,» said Blade curtly. «I'm damned if we'll wait until they've got it up to three to one.» His gaze swept over the formation of Blue Eyes. His voice rose in a shout designed to be heard both by them and by their massing enemies. «Spears-out! Pairs-form!» A moment's pause while the Blue Eyes shifted into their fighting pairs as Krog had taught them to do. The Green Towers stared uneasily. Blade and Krog strode out in front of their fighters and together raised their voices in one shout:

«Charge!»

The Blue Eye fighters charged at such a pace that Blade and Krog had to move fast to avoid being trampled by their own men. They angled out to each flank as the formation rolled forward, waving their swords and yelling encouragement to their own men and threats at the Green Towers. The Green Towers flinched. They were already giving ground toward the gate when the charging line smashed into them. .

And over them, and through them, and around them. Spears snapped forward with machinelike precision into the first rank of Green Towers. They screamed and reeled back or went down. The Blue Eyes kept right on going over the writhing or still bodies, swords out and blurring in the air in front of them, second spears held high for a downward stab. A mighty roar of clashing metal and screaming men filled the courtyard. And on either flank Blade and Krog leaped, bellowed, struck, and slew.

The first man Blade ran at flinched away. He saved himself, but he opened a path. Blade plunged through that path, deep into the Green Tower ranks, whirling about like a lethal dervish in a continuous blur of motion. The second rank of Green Towers suddenly found themselves attacked not only by the enemy in front but by this bloodstained giant in their rear. Part of that line broke and scattered. Those with a clear path to the gate scampered for it, leaped up, and vanished into the night. Those who found Blade between them and safety mostly died. Then Blade turned toward the enemy's center.

Here were their best fighters, the men who would not run, who would die where they stood. And die they did, although there were moments when Blade was not sure that he wouldn't die with them. A spear thrust at his face gashed his cheek and missed his eye by a fraction of an inch, and the shock as his down-plunging sword met the metal spear shaft sent a jolt up his arm. But the arm gave first, and the spear dropped down. Blade ran his own spear in through the opening into the man's throat.

Another opponent sprang into the place of the fallen man. This was a fighter nearly as large as Blade himself, armed with a two-handed sword that flashed and whirled like a berserk windmill. It chopped clean through Blade's spear shaft and missed Blade's arm by a hair. But in that split second Blade lunged in under the reach of the huge sword. The swordsman could not shorten his reach enough, and so he died with Blade's knife rammed up under his ribs into his heart.

As the man fell away to one side, a spear flashed so closely past Blade's head that he felt the whuff of disturbed air in his hair. He looked along the line of flight and saw Halda, her arm dropping down from throwing position. On her face was a look of disgust. Quickly Blade swung aside so she would not know that he had seen her. That spear had been aimed at him. If it had hit him, Halda would have told her father that she had been aiming at the swordsman and only hit Blade by accident. Whether or not Krog would have believed his daughter would have meant nothing to a dead man. Was Halda moving toward open hostility? He would have to walk carefully after the battle. A bold or foolhardy Green Tower broke from the enemy line to challenge Blade. His mind and body snapped back to the business at hand, and soon the man went down.

Eventually the battle came to an end. The Green Tower fighters who had not dashed off into the darkness or knelt and been bound as prisoners lay dead or dying on the ground. Counting those who lay dead in the courtyard with those who lay dead outside the walls, the Green Towers had lost more than two-thirds of their fighting men. By death or by desertion they had also lost many more than a hundred slaves. But there had been far too many Blue Eye losses as well.

«We must put off moving against the other gangs for a time,» said Krog, shaking a head made hideous by the caked blood from a cut scalp. The fight over, some of his normal eloquence was coming back. «The Green Towers are no longer a menace. But some of the other gangs may think they have done us so much damage that we can now safely be attacked and defeated. We have many weeks of work ahead of us before we can take the offensive again.»

Blade nodded wearily. He wanted only to sit or lie down, wash the sweat, blood, and filth from his body, and sleep for as many hours as possible. He did not care whether Halda shared his bed or not, Obviously she would now be looking for any possible opportunity to put him out of the way without her father's knowledge. There would be a great risk in associating with her. But there would be a greater danger to both himself and Narlena in rejecting her. He would have to plod on as before, seeking to take advantage of this delay in Krog's plans. He only hoped the Dreamers would do the same.

At least this battle had been a good night's work for the Dreamers. Blade doubted that Krog would have appreciated being told that. The battle had cost the Wakers close to two hundred fighting men. Not one Dreamer had raised a finger to bring this about, let alone a sword. Yet as he looked at the crumpled bodies and silently counted them, he had to force himself to call this slaughter a victory for anybody. He shook his head. Was it just that he was tired, or was he beginning to get tired of the endless fighting that seemed to be the rule in Dimension X?